Hi folks,
I discovered a leak in a water pipe in my basement that I have reason to believe has been there for over a year. Once underneath it, I had a set of papers get all wrinkly, but they were dry when I found them and no leaks in evidence at the time. While working on a project in the area this weekend I felt a tiny, tiny splash on my hand and it was a fragment of a drop of water. The leak is up high in the floor joists; the droplet fell, splashed on a valve on the pipe below, and a couple microliters hit my hand. I quickly found the leak; it drips maybe once every 5-10 minutes.
I won't bury the lede: I've reached out to a plumber I trust on a non-emergency basis, and asked him to schedule me in sometime next week. He'll do a good job and the repair will be under his bond/insurance.
But, I really can't let this stuff go. I'm handy and have sweated plenty of pipes in my day (which was years ago, really...
)
Here are some pictures:
The pipe is the incoming tap water line pre-water softener. The softener is directly underneath the area shown (with the lower cut-off ball valve as the emergency cutoff if the softener dies). The other ball valve in the upper left is on the pipe that leads to a hosebib in the garage.
I really thought about tackling this myself, before deciding I could easily turn a simple job for a plumber into a huge expensive mess.
I thought about things like:
A) Drain pipes, clean off crusts, heat the failed solder joint in the T, hit with more solder. This will probably either completely not stop the leak or just delay it.
B) Drain pipes, cut a few inches of the pipe off on the failed side, heat joint, remove remaining piece from the T, clean inside of T, put in new piece of pipe with a full slip coupler. Better chance of working but the inside of the T join is probably a corroded mess.
C) Drain everything, cut out the T on all three legs including sufficient room to work, solder new measured lengths of copper into the T while it is accessible on the ground, then use full slip couplers to reposition the extended T to fit in the area where it was cut out. Carefully solder the 6 joints on the 3 couplers. This would probably work and probably is within my skill set and probably could be accomplished with no new tool purchases. But if it goes wrong, it's a mess and the house has no water at all.
D) Cut out the T, use sharkbite fittings (T with sharkbite and couplers with sharkbite to replace small lengths needed). I've never worked with sharkbite and would need a couple tools; by the time I bought everything I might as well have paid the plumber, plus, if it leaks I'm really screwed. I have no experience with getting it right in a "safe environment" that I can shut off without getting my family pissed at me.
The plumber, based on my experience, will probably cut the T out, and use PEX lengths to connect a T using these special clamp things he tells me last forever; he used them on a prior project that involved splicing into existing lines. So far, so good.
What would you guys do in this case?
I discovered a leak in a water pipe in my basement that I have reason to believe has been there for over a year. Once underneath it, I had a set of papers get all wrinkly, but they were dry when I found them and no leaks in evidence at the time. While working on a project in the area this weekend I felt a tiny, tiny splash on my hand and it was a fragment of a drop of water. The leak is up high in the floor joists; the droplet fell, splashed on a valve on the pipe below, and a couple microliters hit my hand. I quickly found the leak; it drips maybe once every 5-10 minutes.
I won't bury the lede: I've reached out to a plumber I trust on a non-emergency basis, and asked him to schedule me in sometime next week. He'll do a good job and the repair will be under his bond/insurance.
But, I really can't let this stuff go. I'm handy and have sweated plenty of pipes in my day (which was years ago, really...
)Here are some pictures:
The pipe is the incoming tap water line pre-water softener. The softener is directly underneath the area shown (with the lower cut-off ball valve as the emergency cutoff if the softener dies). The other ball valve in the upper left is on the pipe that leads to a hosebib in the garage.
I really thought about tackling this myself, before deciding I could easily turn a simple job for a plumber into a huge expensive mess.
I thought about things like:
A) Drain pipes, clean off crusts, heat the failed solder joint in the T, hit with more solder. This will probably either completely not stop the leak or just delay it.
B) Drain pipes, cut a few inches of the pipe off on the failed side, heat joint, remove remaining piece from the T, clean inside of T, put in new piece of pipe with a full slip coupler. Better chance of working but the inside of the T join is probably a corroded mess.
C) Drain everything, cut out the T on all three legs including sufficient room to work, solder new measured lengths of copper into the T while it is accessible on the ground, then use full slip couplers to reposition the extended T to fit in the area where it was cut out. Carefully solder the 6 joints on the 3 couplers. This would probably work and probably is within my skill set and probably could be accomplished with no new tool purchases. But if it goes wrong, it's a mess and the house has no water at all.
D) Cut out the T, use sharkbite fittings (T with sharkbite and couplers with sharkbite to replace small lengths needed). I've never worked with sharkbite and would need a couple tools; by the time I bought everything I might as well have paid the plumber, plus, if it leaks I'm really screwed. I have no experience with getting it right in a "safe environment" that I can shut off without getting my family pissed at me.
The plumber, based on my experience, will probably cut the T out, and use PEX lengths to connect a T using these special clamp things he tells me last forever; he used them on a prior project that involved splicing into existing lines. So far, so good.
What would you guys do in this case?
